1995 – Bicoastal

Boston’s small staff, shown here in 1997, managed the company’s expansion on the East Coast.

If you want to win over an institutional investor, you can’t just talk West Coast holdings. Prologis legacy company AMB recognized that fact early on.

”What if you go into a meeting and the person said, ‘You know, I’m a little bit light on East Coast,’” said Bob Burke, one of AMB’s three co-founders. “You either put your materials back in your briefcase and walk out, or you say, ‘Oh, East Coast, we do that, too.’”

The willingness to invest outside of AMB’s initial West Coast comfort zone gave the small company great momentum. And when frequent flyer miles added up, it made sense to trade in travel for a new home on the opposite coast—to use time more efficiently and better serve customers.

Bob Burke was the man for the job.

CEO Hamid Moghadam thought Atlanta, Washington or New York were the most logical locations—they were considered the most centrally located cities on the Eastern Seaboard—but the partners figured that if Burke was the one moving, he should choose the city.

“I’m willing to move to the East Coast,” Burke noted. “I won’t live in New York and I won’t live in Washington, D.C., but I will go to Boston.”

Upon reflection, it appeared that Boston was the best choice. San Francisco and Boston are similar: Both are densely populated port cities with tech-rich economies. And two of the partners had Massachusetts roots: Moghadam graduated from MIT, Abbey from Amherst College.

The first Boston office was a small outpost. The company had hired just a few people to start, and then found a group of people preparing to leave an insurance company.

“We now have offices around the world. We don’t even think about it,” Moghadam said. “But that second office was really a big deal. How were we going to communicate and when were we going to have the investment committee calls? There’s a three-hour time difference. It worked out really well, and Bob was very important to the success of the company.”

It was also a big deal because it was the springboard for further expansion across the United States and internationally. The company steadily grew in target markets, shifting out of retail to focus on industrial property.